Today we had a busy day here on Everest.  Our team went up the Ice Fall to continue with their job, along with personnel from SPCC, to open the route to Camp 1.  We were stopped yesterday by a huge ice barrier, a wall that everybody said was impassable, a real dead end.  Today, when we got to the same place to continue working, the impossible block had broken in two, opening a natural pass.  "It was God who opened the path", said Prem, our SPCC team chief and leader of the work on the Ice Fall.

The apparent miracle did not leave us at ease, because we felt the Ice Fall was very unstable, noise everywhere and blocks of ice tumbling down all day.  Irivan said he saw a block "the size of a Fusca (VW Beetle)" rolling down the mountain.

I have seen the enthusiasm of the Brazilian team myself.  Prem did not know how to thank our help.  We carried the ropes, stakes and today Bonga even risked like a real Sherpa carrier, carrying a couple of aluminum ladders, which we are using to improvise bridges over the crevasses (see photo).

But the greatest reason for joy to all of us, without doubt, was the arrival of our new notebook.  Imagine the confusion when you have a problem with a computer in Brazil.  Now place yourself on the biggest mountain of the world, far from everything, 8 days away by foot from the nearest resting place.  Anyway, change a hard disk, install the new software, a real odyssey. 

See the scenes of the Ice Fall on today's pictures.  Note on the larger picture how the climbers are reduced to small black dots on the greatness of the mountain.   

Namastê! (see the next dispatch as we get caught up here)